Wednesday, March 3, 2010

The Water Protection & Reinvestment Act, HR 3202

The health and safety of our nation’s communities depend on the infrastructure that provides clean drinking water and wastewater disposal. Many of these critical facilities, however, are aging and in dire need of replacement or repair.If we are to protect our nation’s public health and environment, we’ll need to ensure that our drinking water and wastewater pipelines and treatment facilities meet the demands of the 21st century.

The Need for Legislation:

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has given our nation’s drinking water and wastewater infrastructure a grade of “D-” in their 2009 report card. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s most recent Clean Water and Drinking Water Infrastructure Gap Analysis estimates a $534 billion gap between current investment and projected needs over the next 20 years. Last year alone, American communities suffered more than 240,000 water main breaks and saw billions of gallons of overflowing combined sewer systems, causing contamination, property damage, disruptions in the water supply, and massive traffic jams. According to ASCE, an average of six billion gallons of potable water is lost per day in the US because of leaky pipes.This is enough to fill nearly 9,091 Olympic-sized swimming pools!

Our nation’s water infrastructure needs have grown while federal funding for clean water has declined. While the needs are estimated to be over $25 billion a year, appropriations for water infrastructure have averaged just over $2.3 billion a year since 2000. This pushes more and more costs on local governments and ratepayers, whose rates have grown at twice the rate of inflation in recent years.We need new sources of revenue to meet our communities’ water infrastructure and environmental restoration needs. A Water Protection and Reinvestment Trust Fund, funded by polluters and those who use our water systems for product disposal, will provide a deficit-neutral, consistent and protected source of revenue to help states replace, repair, and rehabilitate critical drinking water and wastewater treatment facilities.

How it Would Work:

The Water Protection and Reinvestment Act would assess new taxes, or user fees, on: water-based beverages; items disposed of in wastewater (such as toothpaste and toilet paper); pharmaceuticals; and corporate income. These new revenue sources would raise approximately $10 billion a year. Most of the funding would be distributed as grants and loans through the existing Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Funds, giving states the authority to set project priorities and deliver funds directly to municipalities. The remaining funding would support new programs for research and development, green infrastructure, small water systems, combined sewer overflow reduction, global warming, and other state and local priorities.

The Water Protection and Reinvestment Act Will:

·Protect public health by providing the funding communities need to provide safe drinking water and sewer service.

·Restore the environment by providing incentives for green infrastructure that reduces energy use and withstands the impacts of global warming.

·Create jobs by investing in projects to repair and replace aging systems. A $10 billion investment would create between 200,000 and 267,000 new jobs in engineering, construction and other industries.

·Reduce pollution by decreasing the number and severity of combined sewer overflows, discouraging the over-use of pesticides and fertilizers, and reducing the amount of pharmaceuticals in our water supply.

11 comments:

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Tax toothpaste ??? When we have so many industrial and municipal entities dumping into our streams and oceans and storm drains ? Tax them. Then they can choose between paying the tax or cleaning up their acts.

If it causes an industry to lose its entire revenue stream, then banning a product is political suicide, and that's why you won't see it happening. Taxes are despised, but acceptable since companies can just pass the tax on to the consumer. Which in my opinion is where it should ultimately land anyway. Because if the consumer weren't consuming something, then the corporation wouldn't bother to make it. *People* should feel the result of their actions.

Its not just big industry that is a pollution problem. Illicit sanitary connections from residential and small business to the storm drain system is more common than people think. Municipalities do not have the money or resources to locate and remove them despite it being mandated by the Phase II NPDES requirements. www.ecsk9s.com

American Inginuity involves making due with what we have.We do not have petroleum products.Why insist on running to jobs in the city like chickens with no heads. Calearth.org can show us how to build where we use little to no energy to heat/cool our abode.Mayans were isolated from trade and were self contained in there teraced gardens.

Hendoku eyoku is Japanese for from great poison comes great medicine. It is time for a consorted effort to save our lives and those to come. Iliminate greed and proceed. There is no real reason to work/slave for another individual or group.

Overview

Know Your h2o is a program designed to educate people on the link between freshwater management issues and the impact on our oceans, waves, and beaches. We advocate for practical and environmentally sound solutions.

Do you know where your water comes from? In many places, water travels thousands of miles through canals and pipelines before reaching your home. Due to persistent drought, growing population and legislation, less water will be delivered from these sources in the future.

Many rivers near the coast have been paved over, and nearly all storm drain pipes empty into our oceans. This dumps animal waste, pesticides, fertilizers, oil and pollution from our cars and roads, plastics and anything else in our watersheds and ultimately into the ocean.

Through conservation, using climate-appropriate plants, permeable pavement, capturing and reusing "waste" water, and Indirect Potable Reuse (IPR), we can reduce water pollution in the ocean AND improve our drinking water supply.